“Everybody on stage!” The voice snaps through the spring evening air and 20 actors in Jubilus — a production of Our Lady of Good Counsel Church in Little Rock — scramble from small pockets of conversation to their appointed places.
Director Elizabeth Reha, the force behind the voice, strides to the front of the stage and surveys her troops. It’s a motley group, as all Jubilus casts are, a mix of styles, sizes and experience, from grade school age to well beyond.
“The cool thing about the show is that anybody can be in it,” Reha said. “My philosophy is you can be as young as 4 and as old as 84; if you want a line, you can have a line; if you don’t want to say anything, you don’t have to say anything. If you want a solo, you can have a solo and if you’re not good, it’ll be short. But you get a chance to be on stage.”
Reha, whose day job is director of the diocese’s Family Life Office, is one of just three people who have been involved in all 27 of the productions. The others are music director Patricia Thompson, who is also onstage, and Christopher Baker, sound technician. But there are plenty who come in just one or two shows shy of perfect attendance and they know the look on Reha’s face. The one that says: Rehearsal is open, Act II needs attention and time is ticking.
“I tell them every time I cast them, ‘I’m casting you because I’m stretching you further than you were before.’” she said. “And I always give them the speech, if I can get you to step over the line between your ‘good’ and your ‘great’, then I’ve done my job.”
Community theater is a labor of love and Jubilus is a baby that has incubated slightly differently in each of its incarnations. The first year was a loosely connected group of songs compiled by the late Hardy Banks, who came up with the idea and who quickly found kindred souls in Reha and Thompson. Within a few seasons, the idea hatched to weave songs together with a plot.
“When it started, we wanted to have a place for music and fellowship and bring the people together,” Thompson said. “As we became better at what we were doing over the years, it’s become a play where those of us who maybe always thought, ‘Oh that would be nice to do,’ for two weeks every year, get to be on Broadway.”
As it grew more polished, it also grew more popular. Jubilus hosts 600 guests across four performances. The cast averages 50 members; with crew and servers, almost 100 people are required to pull off the event. Proceeds benefit parish projects, but more than money for the church elevates Jubilus from mere entertainment to ministry status.
“We’ve always called it a ‘fun’ raiser, not a fundraiser,” Reha said. “It’s always been about community experience. We support one another, we’re present to one another. We join together not just under the auspice of doing a good show, but under the auspice that we’re all going to affirm one another and share Christ’s love with each other.”
“This has become a home base for people in the parish who didn’t have any other connection,” Thompson said. “We’ve been able to be there for each other during losses of family members, celebrations of anniversaries, all of these things that occur.”
And then there was the year the parish school closed, an event that caused widespread mourning and an exodus of people to other congregations. Jubilus was the reminder that more than the show must go on. And every year, Reha rekindles that idea in cast members past and present.
“They all know that no matter where they are or where their life takes them, they can always come back here and they’re home,” she said.
